Courses of Study

Sections

German Studies

Last updated: August 15, 2017 at 10:32 a.m.

Objectives

The German section of the Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature offers instruction in the German language and literature aimed at providing access to many aspects of the culture, past and present, of Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland. German has always been one of the prime languages of international scholarship, and the reunification of Germany in 1990 has drawn renewed attention to the European and worldwide importance of that country. German majors have gone on to graduate school in German literature to prepare for a career of teaching and research or to professional schools in law, medicine, or business, entered government work, or found employment with publishing companies or business firms with international connections.

Learning Goals

German Studies draws upon history, music, political science, philosophy, the arts, and literary studies to examine German culture past and present. Students in German Studies learn about German language and literature and become knowledgeable about the cultures of Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland. German Studies prepares students for careers in teaching and research, as well as professions such as law, medicine, business, and government.

Students in German Studies will be familiar with a wide range of methodologies and frameworks for the analysis of German culture, and able to follow current findings and debates within the field. As it engages students with extensive existing research in multiple disciplines, our curriculum is particularly committed to advance students’ understanding in a variety of areas.

Core skills
Students completing the minor in German Studies will be able to:

1. Speak and comprehend German to function competently in daily life;
2. Read and write German at a level of critical literacy;
3. Perform cultural analyses;
4. Develop cultural competence: they will understand social norms, behaviors, values, taboos.

Students completing the major in German Studies will in addition be able to:

5. Write and speak German sufficiently to participate in discussions, write critical essays and research papers, and give oral presentations;
6. Read and interpret both primary and secondary texts and/or data from a variety of disciplines, historical periods, and cultures;
7. Conceptualize and develop complex research that questions existing assumptions;
8. articulate an understanding of the multiple roles of German culture in history.

Knowledge
Students completing the minor/major in German Studies will have a foundational knowledge of the German language and will understand the complexities of:

1. The history of modern German literature and culture, 1750 to the present;
2. Cultural developments in modern German-speaking central Europe, such as in the arts, cinema, literature;
3. Central issues such as the Nazi era and the Holocaust, the role of gender and minority discourses, and their reflection in German literature, arts, and cinema;

Social Justice
Since the Holocaust, Germany has served as a model of social justice. The discrimination and subsequent murder of six million Jews in Germany and the exclusion and persecution of many other minorities has left an indelible mark on German culture to this day. Directly and indirectly, our courses shed light on the meaning of the struggle for social justice in various periods of German history. Minority discourses continue to be front and center in German literature and politics today.

Within our courses in German Studies, students are prepared to:

1. Analyze systems of power and privilege;
2. Examine the causes, manifestations, and consequences of institutional discrimination of every kind;
3. Understand and respect a range of cultural perspectives.

Experiential Learning
To some extent all language study is experiential. Courses in German language are student-centered and interactive. We strongly encourage our students to study abroad for a summer, a semester, or even a year in a German-speaking country to immerse themselves fully.

Upon Graduation
The German Studies curriculum prepares students for a wide range of careers. Graduates of our program are applying their skills and knowledge to academic and professional pursuits in medicine, law, education, government, social service, public policy, religion, counseling, international relations, journalism, publishing, business, and the arts.

How to Become a Major

The department welcomes all students who wish to become majors in German Studies. Non-majors and majors are offered computer-aided instruction in German, and work in the classroom is supplemented with regular German-speaking events. Majors in German Studies are encouraged to spend their junior year in Germany or any other German-speaking country. Students are especially encouraged to participate in the Berlin Summer Program, a six-week intensive program taught in the center of the German capital. See Scott Van Der Meid in the Study Abroad office for more details.

In addition to the major in German Studies, the section offers a minor in German Studies and participates in the program in European Cultural Studies. (The abbreviation GECS denotes German and European Cultural Studies courses.)

Faculty

Stephen Dowden, Chair and Undergraduate Advising Head for the European Cultural Studies Program
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Kathrin Seidl, Undergraduate Advising Head for German Studies and Director of the German Language Program
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Sabine von Mering, Director of the Center for German and European Studies
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Requirements for the Minor

A. Advanced language study is required by taking GER 103a.

B. Advanced literature study is required by taking GER 105a.

C. Students must take 2 additional elective courses from among the following: German courses numbered above 105a, GECS courses and cross-listed courses.

D. Successful completion of GER 30a or a departmental language exemption exam is a pre-requisite for the minor.

E. No course with a final grade below C-, and no course taken pass/fail, can count toward fulfilling the requirements for the minor in German Studies.

Requirements for the Major

A. ECS 100a (European Cultural Studies: Proseminar/Modernism) to be completed no later than the junior year.

B. Advanced language and literature study: Required are: GER 103a, GER 105a, and GER 109b, plus any five German literature/culture courses above GER 105a, at least two of which must be conducted in German.

C. Majors wishing to graduate with departmental honors must enroll in and complete GER 99d (Senior Thesis), a full-year course or GER 99b (Senior Essay), a one-semester course. Before enrolling, students should consult with the coordinator. Candidates for departmental honors must have a 3.50 GPA in German courses previous to the senior year. Honors are awarded on the basis of cumulative excellence in all courses taken in the major and the grade on the honors thesis or essay. One semester of the senior thesis or the honors essay may be counted toward the six required upper-level courses.

A major in German may obtain the Massachusetts teaching certificate at the high school level by additionally completing requirements of the Education Program. Interested students should meet with the program director.

D. No course with a final grade below C-, and no course taken pass/fail, can count toward fulfilling the requirements for the major in German Studies.

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

GER
10a
Beginning German
Four class hours per week.Intended for students with little or no previous knowledge of German. Emphasis is placed on comprehending, reading, writing, and conversing in German and the presentation of basic grammar. Class work is enhanced by various interactive classroom activities and is supplemented by extensive language lab, video, and computer-aided exercises. Usually offered every year in the fall.Ms. von Mering

GER
20b
Continuing German
Prerequisite: A grade of C- or higher in GER 10a or the equivalent. Four class hours per week.Continuation of comprehending, reading, writing, and conversing in German, with an emphasis on basic grammar concepts. Special attention is paid to the development of speaking skills in the context of cultural topics of the German-speaking countries. Extensive language lab, video, and computer-aided exercises supplement this course. Usually offered every year in the spring.Ms. Seidl

GER
30a
Intermediate German
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fl
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Prerequisite: A grade of C- or higher in GER 20b or the equivalent. Four class hours per week.In concluding the development of the four language speaking skills--comprehending, writing, reading, and speaking--this course focuses on finishing up the solid grammar foundation that was laid in GER 10a and GER 20b. It also presents additional audio and video material, films, radio plays, and newspaper and magazine articles, as well as a variety of extensive interactive classroom activities. Usually offered every year in the fall.Ms. Seidl

GER
98a
Independent Study
May be taken only with the permission of the chair or the advising head. Readings and reports under faculty supervision. Usually offered every year.Staff

GER
98b
Independent Study
May be taken only with the permission of the chair or the advising head. Readings and reports under faculty supervision. Usually offered every year.Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

The abbreviation GECS denotes German and European cultural studies courses which are taught in English.

GECS
130b
The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
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hum
wi
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Conducted in English.Compares Walt Disney’s films with German and other European fairy tales from the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing on feminist and psychoanalytic readings. Usually offered every second year.Ms. von Mering

GECS
131b
Goethe—A European Romantic and his Muses
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hum
wi
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Conducted in English. The women he loved and collaborated with inspired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) to write bestsellers like The Sorrows of Young Werther, which in turn inspired Jules Massenet to compose the opera “Werther”. In this course we will look at Goethe’s work with a critical eye to the representation of women, and the influence Goethe had on 19th century Europe and beyond. Usually offered every third year.Ms. von Mering

GECS
167a
German Cinema: Vamps and Angels
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hum
wi
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Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation. From silent film to Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi cinema, from postwar cinema in the East and West to new German film after unification, this course traces aesthetic strategies, reflections on history, memory, subjectivity, and political, cultural, and film-historical contexts with an emphasis on gender issues. Usually offered every second year.Ms. von Mering

GECS
185b
Contemporary German Fiction
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hum
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Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.Explores the postmodernist rejection of the German tradition in fiction after World War II, a multifaceted confrontation with German history and organized amnesia that has continued into the present. Works by Koeppen, Grass, Johnson, Bernhard, Handke, Bachmann, Seghers, Treichel, Sebald, and others. Usually offered every year.Mr. Dowden

GECS
187b
Seeking Justice: Jews and Germans
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hum
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Since WWII the relationship between Jews and Germans has been defined by the Holocaust. How could a modern civilized nation like Germany perpetrate the Nazi crimes? What led to the Nazi regime and how have Jews and Germans tried to overcome a history of injustice since 1945? We will investigate the past two hundred years of this relationship by looking at some of the most influential texts and films that address the question of seeking justice. Usually offered every third year.Ms. von Mering

GECS
188b
Human/Nature: European Perspectives on Climate Change
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hum
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Open to all students.Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.Ms. von Mering

GER
103a
German Culture Through Film
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hum
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Prerequisite: GER 30a.Approaches an understanding of contemporary German culture through film by focusing on one of the most fascinating and turbulent of national cinemas. Landmark films from the 1920s to the present and pertinent essays, articles and studies will provide a historical perspective on decisive social and cultural phenomena. Major themes include Vergangenheitsbewältigung, multi-ethnic societies, terrorism, life in the GDR, and cultural trends at the beginning of the 21st century. Students learn also about the technical side of filmmaking and produce their own short film under professional guidance. Usually offered every second year.Ms. Seidl

GER
105a
Writing on the Wall: Literature, the Arts, and the Fall of the Wall
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fl
hum
wi
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Prerequisite: GER 30a or the equivalent.The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 drastically changed Germany’s geographical and political landscape. This course focuses on the role of literature, music and the arts in this historical process, and on changes in conceptual frameworks for the perception of borders, language, space and tradition. Students expand their vocabulary, improve their oral/written use of idiomatic German, and hone reading strategies and analytical skills. Usually offered every year.Ms. Seidl

GER
120b
Deutsche Mäerchen
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fl
hum
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Prerequisite: GER 30a. Conducted in German.An advanced German language course focused on the fairy tale in German literature, and especially on the narratives collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. It also explores the Kunstmärchen, and similar stories composed by German writers from Romanticism to the present. Usually offered every third year.Ms. von Mering

GER
181a
Franz Kafka's Erzählungen
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fl
hum
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Prerequisites: GER 105a is recommended.A detailed exploration of Kafka's works, life, and thought. Emphasis will be given to his place in the larger scheme of literary modernism. Usually offered every third year.Mr. Dowden

Cross-Listed in German Studies

COML
100a
Introduction to Global Literature
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hum
wi
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Core course for COML major and minor.What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.Staff

ECS
100b
European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Making of European Modernity
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hum
wi
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Investigates how the paradigm of what we know as modernity came into being. We will look at the works of writers and philosophers such as Descartes, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Petrarch, Ficino, Rabelais, and Montaigne. Artwork from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will be used to understand better what "the modern" means. Usually offered every spring semester. Mr. Randall

FA
47b
Renaissance Art in Northern Europe
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ca
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May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 54b in prior years.A survey of the art of the Netherlands, Germany, and France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cultural developments such as the invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the practices of alchemy and witchcraft will be considered through the work of major artists. Usually offered every fourth year.Mr. Unglaub

HIST
123b
Reformation Europe (1400-1600)
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wi
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Survey of Protestant and Catholic efforts to reform religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Topics include scholastic theology, popular piety and anticlericalism, Luther's break with Rome, the rise of Calvinism, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, the Catholic resurgence, and the impact of reform efforts on the lives of common people. Usually offered every third year.Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST
126a
Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
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ss
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Survey of politics, ideas, and society in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Focuses on the changing relationship between the emerging modern state and its subjects. Topics include the development of ideologies of resistance and conformity, regional loyalties and the problems of empire, changing technologies of war and repression, and the social foundations of order and disorder. Usually offered every third year.Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST
131a
Hitler's Europe in Film
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Takes a critical look as how Hitler's Europe has been represented and misrepresented since its time by documentary and entertainment films of different countries beginning with Germany itself. Movies, individual reports, discussions, and a littler reading. Usually offered every second year.Ms. Kelikian

HIST
137b
World War I
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ss
wi
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Examines the opening global conflict of the twentieth century. Topics include the destruction of the old European order, the origins of total war, the cultural and social crisis it provoked, and the long-term consequences for Europe and the world. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Jankowski

HIST
177b
Modern Germany: Rise of a Global Power
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ss
wi
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Offers a systematic examination of modern Germany from 1815 to the present, with particular attention to Germany's role in globalization. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Freeze

HIST
183b
Community and Alienation: Social Theory from Hegel to Freud
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ss
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The rise of social theory understood as a response to the trauma of industrialization. Topics include Marx's concept of "alienation," Tönnies's distinction between "community" and "society," Durkheim's notion of "anomie," Weber's account of "disenchantment," and Nietzsche's repudiation of modernity. Usually offered every fourth year.Mr. Hulliung

MUS
45a
Beethoven
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ca
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Open to music majors and non-majors.A study of the most influential musician in the history of Western civilization. Although attention is given to his place in society, emphasis falls on an examination of representative works drawn from the symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and solo piano works. Usually offered every third year.Staff

MUS
56b
Romanticism in Music: Breakdowns, Breakups, and Beauty
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ca
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Intended for non-majors. Music majors and minors and any students who have taken MUS 101a,b must obtain permission from the instructor. Considers musical expressions of psychological breakdowns, fragmented breakups, and experimental forms of beauty. Connects nineteenth century music with specific paintings, poems, and political events. Charts the towering influence of Romanticism on 20th and 21st century artists. Usually offered every fourth year. Staff

NEJS
37a
The Destruction of European Jewry
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hum
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Open to all students. May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 137a in prior years.Why and how did European Jews become victims of genocide? A systematic examination of the planning and implementation of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and the Jewish and general responses to it. Usually offered every year.Ms. Jockusch

NEJS
148a
Inside Nazi Germany: Social and Political History of the Third Reich
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hum
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Provides an overview on the social and political history of Nazi Germany (1933-1945) covering the most significant topics pertaining to the ideological basis, structure and functioning of the regime as well as the social and political mechanisms that led millions of Germans to perpetrate war and genocide. Usually offered every second year.Ms. Jockusch

NEJS
159a
Modern Jewish Philosophy
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Surveys the contours of modern Jewish philosophy by engaging some of its most important themes and voices. Competing Jewish inflections of and responses to rationalism, romanticism, idealism, existentialism, and nihilism. This provides the conceptual road signs of the course as we traverse the winding byways of Jewish philosophy from Baruch Spinoza to Emanuel Levinas. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Sheppard

PHIL
107b
Kant's Moral Theory
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An examination of the main philosophical issues addressed in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason from the perspective of their relation to works specifically belonging to his ethical theory: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysics of Morals. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Greenberg or Ms. Moran

PHIL
167a
Hegel: Self-Consciousness and Freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit
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Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or equivalent.Offers a close reading of Hegel and pays special attention to his analyses of the changing patterns of understanding and self-understanding and the way in which he opens up these transformations for the reader to experience. In his modern paradigm, the Subject and the Object of thought necessarily affect one another's potential, essence, and fate. And through a rational comprehension of role of Spirit (Geist) in thought and the world, we can see how they become inextricably bound together. Indeed, for Hegel, the dialectic between subject and object provides the very ground for the self-aware and free subject to participate in modern life. Usually offered every third year.Mr. Sheppard

PHIL
168a
Kant
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Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or permission of the instructor.An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.Mr. Greenberg or Ms. Moran

PHIL
179a
God, Man, and World: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
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hum
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Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.The subject of this course is Rationalism, the seventeenth-century European philosophical movement that maintains the supremacy of "pure reason" as a means of obtaining substantial truths about the world. This course analyzes key writings of the three most influential rationalist thinkers of this period, attempting to elucidate several themes that not only characterize these writers as rationalists, but which continue to inspire philosophers and others who attempt to come to terms with the nature of the world and human existence. Students will read substantial portions of historically significant original works are, dissect and criticize them, consider some of the respected secondary literature, and also consider their relevance to contemporary philosophy. Usually offered every third year. Mr. Samet or Ms Marušić

PHIL
182a
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
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hum
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An intensive study of Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminal work, Philosophical Investigations. This course should be of interest to philosophy and literature students who want to learn about this great philosopher's influential views on the nature of language and interpretation. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Flesch and Mr. Hirsch

POL
189a
Marx, Nietzsche, and Twentieth-Century Radicalism
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ss
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Comparison of two powerful and influential critiques of modern politics and society. Explanation of Marx's work, both for its own insights and as a model for radical theorists; and of Nietzsche's work as an alternative conception of radical social criticism. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Yack

SOC
141a
Marx and Freud
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ss
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Examines Marxian and Freudian analyses of human nature, human potential, social stability, conflict, consciousness, social class, and change. Includes attempts to combine the two approaches. Usually offered every second year.Mr. Fellman